DEXTER BY DESIGN by Jeff Lindsay *****

Highly recommend any Dexter story by Lindsay. You will be entertained every page. He's a delightfully dexterious serial killer cop. Love everything about every book about Dexter and will read this one very slowly so I get the full value of each and every word.

This writer has unsurpassed skills. Suspense. Fear. Giggles. Fake love. If you get HBO you're very lucky and should watch it.

DEXTER RULES.

IN THE DARK by Brian Freeman ***

About solving an old murder/cold case sort of thing with all the old timers present and accounted for. Rehash the old teenager crap til you find a killer. If you're not really slow you can figure out the killer near the middle or so once you get the relationships and hints in place.

I was reading along just fine trying to keep the past, the present, the friends, the boyfriends all the relationships/first, last names in line when I got stymied by this writer Tish pretending she's someone else (Cindy) in her "story", first person and it's supposed to be about a murder she's 'investigating'. So that disarmed me there. I didn't like that she was Cindy in the story. For awhile I thought it was old found writing of Cindy's. Confusing. Not only that but the writer finally tells you about 3/4 way thru the book it's Tish. Not helpful.

Now I'm reading about 1977 (the past), the murder of Cindy's sister, Laura, and suddenly in the middle of this -one of the teenagers involved with the dead girls sister is a cop? or is invited by the cop to help? He's in high school, screwing his new girlfriend (Cindy) who ends up his wife but in the meantime without warning at like 18 he's invited to a murder investigation of one of his school mates? To question one of his school mates? WTF??? This part here is very puzzling as to why it even exists aside from spinning your head around like Linda Blair. DELETE. More writers need to use the delete key. IDIOTS.

So once you ignore the stupid shit it's not too horrid. There is suspense, and the basic writing is fairly understandable. Not a fan but someone else might enjoy it. 

DEVILS IN EXILE by Chuck Hogan *

I didn't bother reading after 50 pages. Some guy gets out of the service, attracts the attention of some other guy who robs drug dealers. Lots of heavy artillery, drugs, shooting, strong arming. I just don't give a shit.

FREEDOM tm by Daniel Suarez ****

The beginning of this was somewhat confusing but I didn't start with the original first book Daemon. It's very techie and network oriented. Pretty much a new world order thrives due to many corporations destroying the economic base. In short.

I liked most of it but did a lot of skipping over the war stuff, it was neverending and repetitive. It was informative about the internet, and a 3D world overlaying reality and was explained well enough for anyone to understand. The thing is you tend to go back and forth about who's side you're on, which seems somewhat intentional but leaves you not really emotionally invested on either side. You don't care who wins or loses. Both sides have monsters. There isn't really one 'hero' to root for in the story either.

Read it and decide for yourself.

GET REAL by Donald E. Westlake ***

Just finished this one, it was a quick read. I thought the author sounded Brit but I could be wrong. Story is imitative of 2 days in the Valley but no where near as funny or amusing. Just a blundering reality show employing real criminals supposed to be acting while they rip off everything on their down time.

There was no one I empathized with. I didn't care about anyone. They all could have gotten shot in the head at any moment and I wouldn't have blinked.

I guess some people would think it was humorous. Not me.

206 BONES by Kathy Reichs *****

Xcellent reading. Highly recommend. She does great descriptions, good intros when necessary, nice sense of humor. This is from the Bones series on FOX.
Definitely a bestselling author, easy to see why.

About a few cold cases and a new addition to her workforce who is trying to make her look bad. Why? Read it and find out.

JOHN DIES AT THE END by David Wong ***

What an abortion. Apparently this started online, the guy edits at Cracked. Way over the top-everything. One example is 'double vision in one eye'. Oh kay.

There is so much absurdity the reader (me) loses the desire to continue. One mindless episode of blood and gore to the next. So great a book he got offered many book deals, movie deals are crawling out his ass. Probably literally, that's how he writes. He writes as if he's taking a shit and is amused by everything dropping into the toilet. On and on. He seems smugly satisfied with the entire mess.

So what is it alias 'David Wong'? Aliens? The debbil? Alternate worlds? or a science project gone Wong? make up my mind because I'm tired of you trying to lead me around in circles. Actually it's almost unreadable until you get to chapter 8 where it finally calms down a tad and almost reads like a real book. I said 'almost'. It's still off the charts.

The online fans probably read a page a week or something and waited with bated breath for the next exciting bizarre installment but when it's all stapled together get the hell out of the way!

Way past Stephen King. There is nothing left to see or do in the gory department. Roach-built people, baby hands walking around on critter bodies sectioned invisibly in half, worm, snake and eel people. Blood everywhere. Dead people who mysteriously never existed. I mean really. Maybe you'll be one of the nutjob fans so pick it up and get started.

The narrator is such a drama queen the whole time I picture him as gay even tho he seems to have a girlfriend but in one part he goes down the cellar ahead of a girl and says this would "change his life forever." So they go down there look around, leave and um...his life is the same as before? LOL Drama-much? There is tons of that. It's like eating so much sugar you become diabetic.
BTW Wong, rural mailbox flags are put up by the home owner to alert the mailman he has a pickup. It's not put up to alert you to the mail, honey. I know there was no postage blahblah but it still makes you look all Homer-y.
AND somewhere a cellar "was never entered again until we burned it down' yet the house was definitely entered, maybe not the cellar and no burning down. There are a lot of leading things like that ending in a dead end. AND John didn't die at the end, apparently more of this shit is gonna fly in the future.

BECOMING ENLIGHTENED by the Dalai Lama *****

Awesome! Really good reading if you have the slightest interest in Buddhism.
Now if only I can free my mind of lust (for stuff), hate and ignorance. If only I could be a vegetarian, it's just I don't know how to feed myself without meat being part of the diet. It would be a lot of learning and work I suppose.

MR SHIVERS by Robert Jackson Bennett **

I'm half way thru this repetitive whatever it is. Some men gather on their travel in the seemingly 1800s or something to kill a scary guy called Mr. Shivers who has killed someone in their family. They pretty much ride the rails, meet hobos and anyone who met or mentions Mr. Shivers is scared shitless. Cuz he can cut up a dead pig and eats hearts?

Here's some repetition for you, one paragraph: "I know. I can see it. I can see it in you. It's eating you alive. That part. That part he took away from you, that part that was her. That empty part is just getting bigger. Eating you up."

Ad nauseum-seriously that's his modus operandi. On and on it goes as they battle their way behind the killer thru red sand storms, hobo battles, fights with each other, suicide, trainmen shooting at them..blahblah. So lets see, some serial murderer is on the prowl, everyone is trying to kill him, except police, and there is 300 pages of it.

It's too much nothing for me. Even tho there's death and destruction- the way it's written it's boring. The characters are left undescribed, so the writer can introduce little tidbits about who they love who died and how they died along the boring way out west but too little too late. I'm not engaged. I don't really care about anyone and it seems like he has filler characters so they can be dangled in front of you for a few pages before being slaughtered off in some disgusting manner. 

It's got enough pages of dialogue so you aren't bored to death with narrative but even the dialogue is vague and never really gets to any point. I've read much better and this could use some work. Published before ready? Pot smoker writer? For me...not working. 

So as I get closer to the end it's like a bad bloody dream. If you hate when someone tells you their dream then don't bother reading this it's a very long boring dream. Author has the word "shiver" all over the place. The guy they're chasing around is "death" with an entire page devoted to all the names he's called "Satan" etc. There's an undertone of religion, cults and crap like that. On one page describes a tattoo of a lizard, another changes it to a snake. Whatever! The monotony of chasing people, watching people die all bloody and running more and chasing each other around in the woods gets so tedious.

FiNAL EXAM by Maggie Barbieri **

Just began and it's a mystery but the beginning is all about a religious school, a priest, nuns, the bible -so I don't know how far I'll get. Keep religion out of my mysteries, if I want to know anything at all about religion I'll go peek in that section while at the library. I hate being fed this bible crap when I'm supposed to be entertained.

So waiting for it to get interesting. It's already childish and boring with extant words verbalized by people supposedly beyond the 1880s. Or maybe I've got it wrong and the story is taking place in some earlier century, not sure cuz I don't hear about cell phones...but no covered wagons. Will letcha know. Probably the writer is from Mars.

"Her husband was Crawford's partner another detective named Fred Wyatt." So how many Fred Wyatt detectives could there be? Missing a comma, much?

Some things are attempts at humor, and some things are pretty inane like the lead is a temporary house mother and parks in her normal spot at the college parking lot (where she works) and now everyone is telling her she's a resident and not to park in her own parking space? WTF? There are pages of this nonsense. O and just for convenience's sake all the Lacrosse team live on the same floor so when the game is over all the students are 'home' and she can lock up. RIGHT. I believe in the 'toof fairy.

There's a lot of religious crap so if you're not into that rigid mental freeze move along. The story line isn't all that and a bag of chips either. On the cover she's compared to "the Plum series" and "VI Warsawski" which must be some sort of joke.

Will finish but only cuz I don't want to drive to the library 2x in one week.

FIRE AND ICE by J.A, Jance ***

A mystery and not too bad. The only disruption is sometimes there are so many names of characters on a page I need a score card. She also breaks up the action, right in the middle of something to introduce some past crap I don't really need. This is sort of a series I guess with 2 major characters involved. I can't really tell for a few minutes which one's persona she's skipping back and forth from and to as she only has little chapter marks leaving you to figure out where you are, who you're with and whether you GAS or not.

I skip over a lot of descriptive intrusive pages of stuff, usually about past occurances- otherwise she's readable. The characters are quirky but sort of up-tight mid westerners. Like saying 'hell' is a bad word.

Someone who reported a crime was suddenly labeled a 'perp' for whatever reason. Some writers (this one) have the characters jump to mental places you don't see coming. Like you have a crime, then the character, without rhyme or reason, absolutely knows when and how it was done but there are (in the readers head -cuz we're smarter) about 12 other possibilities but this writer isn't going there. Linear thinking.

I guess if you picked it up to read you wouldn't be sorry, it's a fair read by a popular writer who sticks to her routine. The only drawback is all the unnecessary narrative explanations:
Made up example: "A gunshot went off in the alley. This alley is where three other murders took place four years ago and where Fred's maternal grandmother was a witness. She had just lost her shirt in a poker game and was standing there alone when approached by the killer. She escaped by hiding in a garbage can. She was eventually put into the witness protection program and Ditzy Mahew hadn't seen her since. Blahblahblah and the bullet missed Ditzy by a foot and a half."

JUMP by Tim Maleeny ***

I'm about halfway thru this one already and a well hated landlord jumps, or more likely is shoved, out the top floor window where a recently retired cop lives on the same floor. He's now busy interviewing his floor mates. His wife died a couple yrs ago and he's astoundingly STUPID for a cop about any of his neighbors. It's like he was blind all the time he lived there until now. He has no awareness that any of them existed before.

Aside from the STUPID BLIND police officer (usually known for their observation skills) the writing flows well, the characters are easily distinguished altho all women have watermelon sized boobs, and flip off their shirts when he walks into the room or sing to him and want to bed him immediately. No wonder there are so many venereal diseases. 

So there's the sultry singer, the 2 "soft" porno queens making their way thru doctorates (HAHAHA....right), the creepy drug dealing brothers, another creepy guy blackmailing the creepy drug dealers and people out to take out other people. It isn't the best book I ever read even without all the Barbies but it's not atrocious either. 

Let ya know more when I'm over it. It was ok nothing special. 

EVEN MONEY by Dick and Felix Francis ****

These are English writers basically about the horse races in England. Apparently you go to a bookie at the track to make bets, not the track running the gambling which is bizarre in itself. So you learn about England racing. Meanwhile the main character gets in a fix with horse tampering, murder and pet chips that go into the race horses. Also his past history of a supposed dead father who shows up and is promptly killed in front of him.

Scams, crooked gamblers fixing races and stuff like that. I didn't think it was horrible, it was well written, never really boring and he explains stuff he's sure Americans don't understand about English racing. I would personally prefer more about individual gambling stories than the background murder, race fixing, price gouging etc but it was entertaining-which is a PLUS.

What upset me as an animal lover was the casual disregard for slaughtering horses that did poorly on the track. The crooks took a crappy horse who physically matched a good racer, killed the crappy horse, had the good one take it's place racing thus giving it better odds (higher price). So I really hated that they didn't call ASPCA's or get more pissed off about shoving ping pong balls up the horses noses and watching them suffer to death. That really pissed me off but didn't phase the writer or his characters AT ALL. So beside that...ok reading. If you love animals you'll want to flip off an email to the Francis's tho-with a flip off. :)

THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE CLUB by Ann Pearlman ***

So far it's ok but cloyingly sweet and domestic. The chapters start with a cookie recipe so if you like cookies you'll automatically enjoy that! It's about an annual cookie swap. The club members make each other a dozen cookies and one plate for charity. Each cook has to tell a story about their cookie or something about their life.

It's homey and aprony but I'm sure some people like that. Not my taste. Mostly it's the cookie hostess's story about her friends and their personal lives. It's like listening to your own friends and their personal blahblahblah. Some of them are former hookers, or were beaten or something like that. Also most of these stories sound very naive but they're based on reality (so she says) and written by a compassionate person who seems to love everyone and everything and wants to bestow her love of life on everyone within range.
Everyone now is happy happy happy!

Don't read it if you're depressed- it'll just piss you off.