TOO MANY MURDERS by Colleen McCullough

Sucks for me. Too many names, first, last, nicknames. Overload of cops and altho this supposedly takes place in Virginia names are all Irish or something. HATE IT. How in my head do I read Denbigh? Or Pugh? HUH? What? Plus writer brings up that a JEW doesn't like the case he's on. I don't get a religious bio on anyone else in this crappola. Biggot bitch.

It all sounds like Merry olde England to me and I don't like it. Buh Bye! Page 55 and it's all over.

It has many cops, many murdered people supposedly by different suspects. Your call if you want to bother or not. Way over descriptive as well. Historical background to gnash your teeth on. Tally Ho!

BTW most AMERICANS are coffee drinkers we don't GAS if tea bags are stapled or sewn shut. Tea is for wussie assholes.

9th JUDGEMENT by Patterson/Paetro ****

Well, it's Women's Murder Club book 9. These 4 sort of bimbettes are friends and all work in or around the PD. Clothing is important to them, shoes, hair blahblahblah.

A movie star's wife is murdered but do they suspect the husband? HEL--LO!!! We gotta torture ourselves reading this to the end while they scratch each other's butts but never go BY THE BOOK on testing husband. Geez. Even a child knows to suspect the husband if the wife is murdered. What UP??? Miss Cop?? LOL

So aside from the blatantly obvious and all the romances and making out etc I personally wouldn't buy it, but get it from the library ya'll. You'll like it.

Murder and more than one to make it less simplistic, fast read, easy, not too many characters to distract you. There's a serial killer, and the movie star, and a wimpy cat burgler.

FALSE PRETENSES by Catherine Coulter ***

Ok, some sort of strong-woman romance. We have the shy retiring virginal pianist married to a dude her granpaws age. OOPS he died under mysterious circumstances and now the entire rich clan of brothers, sisters, grandmaw etc is under suspicion. The protag/widow Elizabeth was acquitted because some unknown guy lied/testified he was with her or somesuch. Funny how no one asks where HE was that night huh? Just skip over that little question.

Liz was being screwed literally and figuratively by some OTHER guy Rowe, she just dumped him and has suddenly grown a pair of balls. She's now an iron maiden running her dead grandad...oops I mean husbands business etc. like she been doin it all her life. Eventually her company tries to take over another with her new beau, they fight back and forth, finally team up, discover the murderer and love busts out all over.

Amusing, entertaining and sometimes laugh out loud preposterous. But heck, it's very readable for something to occupy you before nodding off. Not horrid.

ONCE A SPY by Keith Thomson ***

Action packed adventure, bullets flying, cars stolen and bouncing off garbage cans. Blood and gore. Drummond is over 65 thought to have Alzheimers and his son Charlie went to pick him up dazed and confused. Before they even get out the nursing home door whatever secret agency Drummond used to work for found his sketch of something and now they both must be killed.

Very easy to read, follow and minimal names to learn. I have a bitch tho. Charlie is a gambler. He cashes checks up to 5 thousand and bets it all on one horse at Aqueduct. Now I don't know what day of the week it was, but generally the "pot" or total bets probably don't exceed 5 thousand in the win pool. Probably not. In this story his horse (he says long shot but beg to differ) came in third. I assume he bet to 'win'. Which puts that particular horse as the favorite: $5,000 to WIN. I mean, probably 1:1 odds or something ridiculously small. But since the horse lost the winner was a far distant odds horse and probably paid BIG TIME to win (that sizable $5,000 pool) and surely wasn't the favorite. Writer states the 'favorite' was second after a long shot. Well after Charlies' $5,000 bet they ALL were long shots.

Putting the gambling aside...good story, like the writing style, the ease of scenes from one to the next. I wonder if Drummond is really losing it or faking. I'm at the end; one never knows who has memory issues and who doesn't. It's pages and pages of Charlie and Drummond running from killers. That's it. Everyone's a traitor, every "secret" place they run to has more killers. It gets monotonous. There isn't anything authentic about it either, so after awhile it's cartoonish. The end was unsatisfying.

MR PEANUT by Adam Ross ***

This is basically 2 stories of murders with supposedly innocent husbands but I'm almost done with the book and so far have no clue who done it. It's a page turner for sure. But there are boring to death spots...like Hawaii vacation. I don't care about the scenery blahblahblah...like the author is self indulgent braggart about being there and being amazed by EVERYthing. DGAF. Then we get the Hitchcock blahblahblah. The Pepins meet in this class but all you get for pages and pages is crap about Hitchcock and film....buddy...I didn't pay for a Hitchcock 101 class and DGAF.

Remember detective/doctor Sheppard? -Half this book is a FUGITIVE movie rerun. Sheppard lost his wife, was accused of murder and got off, one armed man..all that. That happened in the 50s and I gotta hear all about it. It doesn't carry the other story along. It's not making sense in relation to the second more current murder. The second death is an obese woman who gets skinny and her husband, it's leading up to, had her killed. Husband David cheated as a regular habit on the wife, he was bored and egotistical and had expectations of everyone around him--mostly as kiss asses. The women in the book all seem like from the 40s ...obedient, submissive, docile or super mysterious. They're more chaste here in this world of men fucking anyone.

I only have 5 pages left to read and honestly...I liked the suspense, my interest was there but began to drift when no point is made. Ever. About anything anywhere. I just don't get it. Don't understand the basic most simplistic "why" of either murder or death. I only have 10 pages left!! What? I need an interpreter?? He does a very good job of descriptions, and dragging you from scene to scene. You WANT to go. You want to read more but you don't get any satisfaction...no reward for your intensity. Nothing. Nada. He's a very good writer; in a way (suspense) but sucks in the reward department. WHY am I going to turn the page? I need a reason and I'm not getting one. Ain't got no satisfaction. Frustration.

Am done. Suddenly near the end, David's name oddly changes to Pepin. There is Alice and David PEPIN so using only Pepin is a distraction. I must have been nodding off somewhere cuz I have no CLUE why. This book is like listening to someone's dream. Remote, weird, Dali-ish. Things pop out from the sides..BOO, behind you, around you and you feel disoriented. What a waste of however long it took me to read it. Because I feel robbed. I have no tangible ending. It ends "however" dreamlike and fantastical. Not a fan.

ANGELOLOGY by Danielle Trussoni *

This one could be very interesting if it didn't bore me half to death with insignificant details. CHOP CHOP. I wish deleting every other chapter was viable.

So we're meeting someone in a park, a very secretive event with little girl Evangeline and her pop. We're told how rare this meeting seems to the little girl and it's so momentous she can remember every detail even now as an adult. "Come" daddy says then author launches into patent-leather Mary Janes, wardrobe of starched cotton blahblahblah O yeah, so we walk into a dingy neighborhood with bright signs....(bright signs? O, let me go on and bore you with what they all say) Cuppuccino, Gelato, Vino blahblahblah and 3 pages later I scan to read SOMETHING interesting......sheesh....must be paid by the word.

This is a good book to practice your scanning efforts because you WILL be doing quite a bit of it or perhaps you're tired and want to sleep. The readable parts make for a good story but it's very bogged down in crap. I'm still reading/scanning over the b.s. -my interest in the basic story is there, it's just the author lacks skill in dragging me along with her boring shit. So far all I can tell you is that some nuns protect something they don't even know what and angels live alongside humans and something somewhere is going to happen.....I sincerely HOPE. Nothing happened and I got almost half thru this monster. You need to be extremely religious, believe in angels as real...I mean ....REAL otherwise you'll be bored to tears. So much bible, so much bullshit. I couldn't finish.

FIRST THRILLS short stories- various authors****

Some really good stories in here along with some stupid ones, some I couldn't read or didn't want to bother. Anything that starts "It was 1865" I'm about done with. Princess of Felony Flats was a waste of my time and barely readable, Karen Slaughter writes a story building up an ex wifes hatred of her dying husband and comes up with absolutely nothing for revenge. I mean, I left empty and flat. Stupid.

There's probably something for everyone in here. Sci fi, thrills, suspense and some good writers, Lee Child, Stephen Coonts, Jeffrey Deaver. It's not bad at all.

A HIDDEN AFFAIR by Pam Jenoff ***

Too early yet for stars. I so want to scribble in this one. The stupid protag Jordan says the love of her life (Jared, yes I have 'he got it at Jared' crap in my head the whole time) 10 yrs ago disappeared. 10 YEARS AGO. Plus she keeps touching the 'diamond' engagement ring he never gave her that is now dangling around her stupid multiple-time-strangled neck. Their "relationship" was a mere few months (MONTHS) so she's either very naive or optimistically stupid. She's on a mission to find this one true love.... and we get to travel along. At his last known address some blonde bimbo runs out, gets a plane ticket and takes off for Austria; we follow.

Also there is a lot of 'history'; she almost got strangled a few months ago, she was on another trip when her friend Sophie lost her life picking up something at Jordan's apartment (her eyes tear up), she is continually reviewing her past. I must have missed the previous installment and guess what.....do not care. Don't want to hear about it either. Even if I so happened to read the book last year WTF. Am I supposed to be reminded by this repetition of information and go...O YEAH now I remember! It's all making sense NOW! LOL

Anyways easy reading, easy to follow, limited number of participants which I like. I'm still reading it and I'm almost half way thru it. Putting Jordan's mindlessness aside it's not badly written, just often absurd. Looking forward to the chase but partly because I like to laugh at Jordan. At the least...she's amusing!

Amusing: She's a stalker of her 10 yr ago fling Jared. She has one drink in a bar, finds out the ex is married, runs into a bathroom and vomits. She's some kind of CIA lightweight. I cannot help laughing. Meanwhile she's falling madly in love with Ari, a guy helping her chase Jared's new wifey poo who foots the bill for Jordan everywhere her wittle piddy paddy feets wants to go.

I am very much in favor of Ari's attitude towards Israel and everything said about needing a country and how the other countries treat Jews. I actually added a star after reading page 128.

The THINGS THAT KEEP US HERE by C. Buckley ****

The book is definitely readable. It's about an avian flu that decimates the world. But it's viewed from one family, say mid 40s and their 2 daughters. A year after the husband leaves the wife and the flu hits - he moves back in with the ex and brings along his 20 something girlfriend. RIGHT. Like that has a touch of reality. NOT.

So anyways they don't seem to have any sort of physical relationship at all (girlfriend ex husband) they sleep apart. Shazia, the girlfriend, pretty much does nothing for weeks on end but eat their food, let everyone cook and clean up after her and she just mopes around sleeping. She would be walking back to Cairo IRL.

The ex wife lost a baby and just can't stop imagining him every day even tho it's 10 years later. So anyways the flu hits, it's the beginning of winter and 6 feet of snow land destroying power all over the east coast. We can just pile it all on for this fiction novel; it's not fiction for no reason. In any case, I don't mind reading it at all altho so much of it is preposterous. If there's no power for 100 miles, there's no frickin WATER. Doofus...water is pumped...electricity....duh. Plus cars had a pile up on the highway--wouldn'tcha know and of course no one can drive anyplace. Apparently no one has 4 wheel drive or snow mobiles. The snow plows never show up. The power company never shows up. Every store is empty and closed. No one works. No one ever hangs out with anyone else due to the flu killing everyone.

It's got a very narrow focus on the one family and since there's no animosity towards the bimbo it lacks a lot what could have been much better. But it doesn't suck. Finished it and there were some small surprises but by the time you find out this stuff you're beyond caring. So much angst and so little reward for the reader.

The WHISPERERS by John Connolly ****

I'm more than half thru this and I like it. There are some boring narrative areas but all in all it's an interesting plot about some ex GIs who are selling antiquities and are in possession of a gold box that's whispering to them, causing suicides of the men involved in the smuggling. Protag is investigating this aspect.

Of course there is information on PTSD, some on serving in Iraq, some on the recruiters techniques, some about torture so the writer delves into a lot of areas and some is repetitious. I can't say it's one of my favorite books but I am interested enough to continue to the end. Not a wicked page turner but nothing I want to quit either.

I would guess he has more male readers, or at least he seems to be writing more for men than women but even a female GI has her issues with the service and he gets into it very well. Most of the service stuff is very realistic. Go for it.