The NIGHT SEASON by Chelsea Cain ****

The book is in pouring rain throughout the novel, flooding etc. An old body from another flood shows up just to make things more twisty. So the dead body's son who kidnapped a kid awhile ago (fruitcake) goes around killing people with octopi. Yeah, don't ask me I didn't write it.  In one scene where the octopi are swimming around in ice cold flood water apparently they can still be alive and kill when they are salt water creatures who would probably be more concerned with survival than looking for victims if they even had the strength to bite someone. Meantime lots of people die by octopi. Couple cops and nosy reporter are on the case.

Thing I really despise is the references to the past book...a series. Please spare me. And there aren't too many people who would take someone serious as a writer (like main character) if they had purple, pink and all the colors of the rainbow for hair with rainbow boots. She has a goat in her house. Really. I mean.....really. When I worked at a newspaper I didn't see one nose ring, tattoo or any purple hair. It was unprofessional and lots of children are led around to see how newspapers are made, along with reporters needing to be taken seriously at crime scenes and in court with lawyers etc. Grow her up or kill her off.

Please stop the series repeat nonsense. If you are going to force me to read books in some kind of order I will not read your books. Keep your main characters, assume we read the last book and move along. STFU about the past. It's past, keep it there. Actually the references were few but not few enough.

ZERO DAY by Mark Russinovich ***

Way too many hackers involved in creating a virus to knock out the US internet system and either create havoc or create lots of tragedies, like plane crashes, dam malfunctions, power plant errors etc. due to our dependence on the internet. There are way way too many spies/secret societies involved, & it's always said the more people involved- the more chances for exposure by any one of them. This novel is difficult to swallow in that regard.

Is it Russians? Chechens? Mafia? Muslims? Single individual? Arabs? New characters intro'd on page 162 which is too far into this mishmosh of people for me to even GAS. Some of the spies have multiple names, online names, alias's, nicknames there are way too many hackers most of the time I have no idea who's the good guys and who's the bad guys which causes me to lose interest.

Some crap about Yousef too far towards the end of the book, and his complicated life from birth to now I just skipped that chapter. Then after learning words like "triggers" and other hacker terms, author throws in other hackers different terms for same words like red, yellow etc representing 'triggers' it gets too deeply detailed and I just drift off into lala land. Some actual action happens around chapter 50 or so but by then you've been dulled into wanting to read something else.

Less is more. What happened to that? There's too many people, too many conspiracies, too many individuals, too many hackers, too many viruses and worms and whatever. Too much of too much.

MURDER in PASSY by Cara Black **

Looks like author drinking tea or demitasse on back flap...shoulda had a clue but I picked it up anyways. Flics apparently are cops. Lots of other French terminology crap to go with that. I'm only around page 60 but I'm skipping over a lot of descriptive b.s. cuz I'm trying to stay awake. Of course the PI is so much more intelligent than the flics and her godfather is being accused of a crime. He goes to jail, gets beat up and at the end goes right back to his cop job. Protag Aimee Leduc doesn't seem all that bright, or the French PI's have less technology to work with. Not horrible enough to quit reading but not intriguing enough to drag around from room to room either. Something about Basques, old vendettas or promises and who all knows. I couldn't figure it all out. Confusing.

Aimee is on the case, get used to all the French-isms and plan on going slow. Not my cup of tea. If the title was Murder in Pussy; well that would be interesting wouldn't it? LOL Meanwhile brace yourself for a slow mover. Books like this; why? and who publishes this crap? I have read 1,000 better books. Bottom of the barrel. I still don't know where all the American mystery writers have gone. Sick of foreign crap.

The ILLUMINATION by Kevin Brockmeier

Boring. Tedious. From one person to the next with injuries that light up. No explanations for the "illumination". No scientific queries. No suggestive ideas. Nothing like that. Just people with their boring lives being boring. If they have a cut it lights up. That's about it folks.

GOOD THIEF GUIDE to VEGAS by Chris Ewan **

In one section this killer used a crowbar to break into a car trunk to kill someone or dump the body then later on the protagonist (a thief) just needs a key to open the trunk and find the body. Now wouldn't the key be unnecessary with a broken trunk? DUH

Then the entire novel is based on someone stealing a "juice list" WTF is that you ask? I read the book and still am confused. Either investors? Or people to blackmail? Or some such nonsense. The ending is so confusing with so many criminals and people involved in whatever the book is about (who knows) that it takes an entire chapter to explain it all IF you happen to be able to remember all the characters, their names and parts played.

I really don't GAS what happens to a main character who is a thief. He steals, robs and pilfers anything he touches. Bet he won't enjoy his girly position in jail. Hated him. Story was barely tolerable.

I hate this stuff too: I locked onto her eyes (OUCH) and held them (DOUBLE OUCH), nodding as sincerely as I could. Blahblahblah

The TERROR of LIVING by Urban Waite **

There are 3 guys; one Hunt who boards horses with his wife used to be a criminal. His best horse just got shot and it's not even discussed at home. Then Drake who's father is in jail and Drake is a cop after Hunt, he caught Hunts companion who just got offed in jail. I have no idea how the killer in jail gets out without being caught but anyways there's the boss of Hunt, Eddie. So far lots and lots of past history back to childhood in some cases. For each character in the novel. I really don't GAS about that stuff. It's way too rambling for me, and over descriptive. Not interested in continuing. I like fast reading and this slows me way down with the detail crap. I'm at page 65 and am closing shop. Not interesting enough FOR ME to continue. Someone else may get engaged and like it but that person isn't me.

COME AND FIND ME by Hallie Ephron ****

Sort of suspenseful, easy to read novel. Not really a mystery. Some dumb bunny hacker Diana falls in love with a hacker Daniel, who it really seems is gay (not verified) with his boyfriend Jake. They've been planning on destroying sort of the Big Brother network of having everyone who is born's information. DNA, GPS, Satellite crap. The two guys planned this years in advance, picked up dumb bunny somewhere then faked Daniels' death. Why? Not a good reason. How'd she get involved when she seems to know so little about hacking in general? IDK. Because of her fake boyfriends fake death she is almost agoraphobic...adds a little more dumb to her bunny. Anyways that's the entire gist of the situation.

Have no idea why she let the boyfriend run off into the world without any punishment whatsoever even tho it was planned to destroy all 'virtual' evidence in existence. Only Jake gets nailed for accidently kidnapping her sister. She's really a lightweight in the 'men' department.

Not murder, not mystery, nothing grabbing you to turn pages but you do it to see if any damn thing will happen to make it more interesting when it actually gets less and less interesting, less details of what's occurring etc. So, ok library book. Wouldn't pay for it.

INDULGENCE in DEATH by J.D. ROBB ***

This is a sort of murder mystery taking place in the future 2060 which I don't know why because there aren't that many futuristic 'things' that would require moving the date up. So far I noticed an ID thing that you can program or scan someone and ID them, like a dead body. Big deal. They talk of vids, and wrist doodads that have a lot of techie stuff but otherwise can't understand it. People still deal drugs, pay for sex, murder for sport. There are robotic type of people but nothing really stands out for it being futuristic like say Orson Wells or Doug Adams....I tend to look for brilliant creativity when reading about a futuristic society.

This book, while I continued to read it, wasn't overly exciting. In fact there was so much repetition I had to skim thru a lot of the repeat stuff, repeatedly. You got your investigator lieutenant Eve and her doting, adoring, unrealistic husband Roarke who owns half the town. You have Eve's crowd of helpful detectives working in the background. So some rich guys are playing a game of murder trying to outdo each other. Not giving anything away cuz it then takes the rest of the book to get evidence. This takes time. Slowly.

NOW YOU SEE HER by Joy Fielding ***

It's readable but not much of a story considering how many pages it is. Would be better short story far as I'm concerned. About a stupid self deluded woman who doesn't think her daughter is dead, goes to Ireland (for some bizarre reason thinks that's where she is), runs around trying to find an Audrey who she believes is her hiding daughter Devon. When she finds the Audrey and it's not her she is still running around looking for Audrey like a blind mouse in a maze.
No wonder everyone thinks she's frickin nuts. She's so stupid she's practically screwing anyone who says she's attractive. I would say she's naive but at 50 she's really quite beyond an idiot. No murder, nothing remotely exciting. Just continuous sexual references, men complimenting her, moving from hotel to hotel and wow...that's about it so far. Her room gets robbed when one of her "boyfriends" (36yo) takes her out. Not even a suspicion he's involved somehow. Too flattered by his attentions to have a brain. Anyway almost but not quite done. So far not recommending cuz it's so blitheringly boring.  Much ado about nothing.

AFRAID of the DARK by James Grippando ***

It took me a long time to really settle into the book. There were too many characters, too many seemingly disassociated events. Probably half thru the book things started to get clearer and more cohesive but it was hard work getting there. Too often people's names are switched from last to first and it was confusing constantly, and also irritating.

I didn't toss my arms up in frustration so it had a certain amount of appeal to continue. A cop Vince Paulo and a lawyer Jack Swyteck are investigating a murder connected by a friendship of the murdered girls father Chuck. The mother of the murdered girl really deserved to be murdered herself for her involvement. So there's a "Dark" guy who begins killing people who had anything to do with the demise of his sister brain washed into being a human bomb years ago; I guess. Far fetched activities (religious, porn, online video porn, sex slaves, FBI, cell phone listening capabilities) leading to far fetched scenarios (murder, collusion of parent, sex slaves, poison murder, Jamal in Gitmo) and you have to work to keep up with it all.

Really if Andie and her whole stupid FBI story was eliminated it would have made the story easier to follow and less nonsensical. That was a red herring and completely off-the-track bullshit woven throughout the novel. Everything to do with her should have been deleted. Ditto Jamal in Somalia, Gitmo, tortured, foot cut off--he played an important role in the story as boyfriend of dead girl, suspected killer and son of Dark's sister's murderer but just now putting that down in writing is so off the wall. There was just too much of everything. Over kill.