FRAGILE by Lisa Unger ***

Not seriously bad for a library read but she is verbose. The internal angst is very interruptive. Henry goes to see Marshall on pg 115 blahblahblah he gets out of the car on page 118 blahblahblah knocks on the door on page 120. SHEESH she just sucks the action right out of the story.

Story is sort of about a current missing teenager; a past one where the local cop was involved in the disappearance and why does he not get the innocent person accused out of jail? DO NOT GET. Then we have some slow guy with Wanda who also knows about some past dead girl named Lily. They're just crawling out of the woodwork.

Maggies mom is so old and decrepit that climbing an attic ladder, sliding down it she is helpless as a lump of coal. Would just die there without intervention and she's not nearly 90 far as I can tell around her 60s maybe? Some strange ideas about aging here or she shouldn't be living on her own DUH.

One scene about the forest we get a list of trees roll call. Elm, Spruce, etc. Geez why? Why? Paid by the word? During one of the accidental deaths with the cop, 4 people are in one car. One dies. Two go in the car home and WTF happened to the 4th one? HUH? Run? Walk? Pony ride? Left to figure it out on your own but then again I'm not finished altho it would be nice if I were. So much blahblabh between anything read-worthy.

Then I stumble on page 284 where a guy writes a confession letter saying he witnessed that Sarah fell accidently and hit her head on a rock. Not even a page later Maggie reads it and asks "Do you know who killed Sarah?" HELLLLLOOOO Did you not just read the letter? What are words for? SHE HIT HER HEAD ON A ROCK, SHERLOCK. Accident -no killer involved.

I won't be writing her name down and looking for more books she wrote.

DOG TAGS by David Rosenfelt ****

I like the book, writer has a nice sarcastic sense of humor. Takes one to know one. I also am pleased to see he has a dog rescue IRL called Tara Foundation which is mentioned in his story as well. Now I'm a fan.

Story is about protag lawyer defending an innocent guy, Billy, of murder. Guy has well trained German shepherd -so I am now a BIG fan. The lawyer Andy also has to solve the murder to get Billy off. This leaves room for a lot of absurdities which I will mention cuz it's only fair. Pg 86 he sneaks a fake Milo (dog) into his house, sneaks the real one some place else to fool the press? And a killer? And then returns the fake dog to the shelter. Do not get. Why wouldn't the press follow him from his house to the shelter? Also; somehow Andy has Erskine followed- and I don't know where, how or why he's onto him. In the area where the murder/robbery occurs there were "other robberies in the area" and somehow that leads the cops to Billy's guilt. Huh?

Also this Andy is so frickin clever and intelligent he has 100x more information than the FBI, the local cops, the Army intelligence all combined. They await information from him with bated breath doing whatever silliness he blackmails them to do, like get Billy off his murder charge for info and give him a couple million to live on.

Supposedly THOUSANDS of people will die and only Andy has the info on who, what, when, where and how. Let me tell ya, the only ones who were about to die were on a tanker. How many people would that be? Not like NYC was going down right? So really it wasn't all that and a bag of chips. Also our hero Andy is directly responsible for telling the killer where a witness could be found who was then shot. Thanks Andy!

It was basically well written, not hard to 'get' but things became increasingly confused as more people were added to the mix all involved in this scheme to make stocks go up? It got bogged down in bad characters, honestly. Otherwise, I read it, it was easy to read, it was entertaining and I love German shepherds and like how the author promotes dog welfare.

PRIVATE by James Patterson ****

Much better than the last one. It's about an investigative agency named Private and some of their current cases. One is a serial killer, one is a murder of a friends wife, and some other crap. There are a lot of things going on at the same time with a lot of people. Of course our hero has been laid by every well endowed female within a 100 mile radius.

Meanwhile we have to keep up with relationships, the mafia, his twin with gambling issues, hired contract killers, girlfriends and past girlfriends, you name it all in under 400 pages. It's a lot to keep up with but not unmanageable you just have to switch your context chapter-ly. His writing is terse and tight. There are no flowery descriptions and it's not required far as I'm concerned. So have at it.

DON'T BLINK by James Patterson ***

Fast 2 day read. Lots of characters but I don't really pay attention because bad guys become good, and vice versa. It's a little trouble keeping up with the names and FBI and who's mafia and who's under cover etc. and of course everyone is in jeopardy all the time from chapter to chapter. He ends each short (2 page) chapter with a cliff hanger. So ya go from one 'situation' to another pretty quick. Bombs, guns, close-up killings, snipers you name it you got it.

Over in 2 (days). Ok for a library read. Not very deep and they guy is a door mat to his fickle girlfriend.

STORM PREY by John Sandford ****

Great library read. Fast paced, established characters without all the past history except in small doses. Only thing that gets over done is all the killers after family members. Get over it. Can't a case just involve other people without family members being stalked, shot at or ran over? They got so many scars that if I don't hear about scar tissue interfering with body function pretty soon I won't think it's realistic.

Otherwise we got about 10 bad guys, including a 'bad' doctor who snorts coke, robbing a hospital and being chased by Lucas Davenport and his crew. I also get bored with the gangs. What I did like was one criminal saying only reason it all happened and went wrong is cuz they were all stupid. LOL That was good.

SPIDER BONES by Kathy Reichs **

I loved the first book I reviewed. This not so much.

I started off really liking the book even tho it began to get bogged down in proper nouns. People- on and on. Then we get people taking other people's ID's and it gets more confusing. Then we get a chimera with different genes AND people switching ID's and more than one ID and bodies being misidentified, like 5 of them. Then we deal with the twins who aren't mom's kids, and kidney transplanting, and the army identification procedure, then gang killings and it's all somehow mind boggingly related cases. Nonsense after nonsense.

I really started hating the story about 3/4 way thru when I'm wrapping my mind around so many fake people, a couple real ones, criminals, gangs and the gratuitous daughter kidnapping, the gratuitous Temperance car chase. I thought it got more and more ridiculous. It was a confusing abortion. Hope next one is more concise. Terse. Something like that.

SUDDEN DEATH SUDOKU by Shelley Freydont ****

Not bad for a library read, formulatic and gossipy but not unreadable. The best part are all the sudoku puzzles throughout the chapters with answers at the back of the book. I printed blanks and had fun doing that.

It's about Kate moving back to her hometown in NH and the locals with a murder involved during a big sudoku contest. She runs a museum of puzzles? And goes to work every day. As if anyone in a small NH town would make that a viable living. Not. Anyways, I'm not sure if this is a cityish town or backwoods town but one never uses deicer/salt in the country unless you want a contaminated well. Bad plan when it gets into your own ground water. Also during a snowstorm middle of winter "....sound she heard must have been thunder hitting the nearby transformer or routing station." HUH? For one thing thunder would be so rare it's unheard of during a winter snow storm. Then thunder wouldn't be hitting anything it would be the lightening. SOOOOO.....

It looks and feels self published with lots of typos or errors, such as: He through the book away. Things missing an 's' stuff like that.

The police chief is unable to drive his SUV to work (I know, huh?). Now come on. It snows but there are 4 wheel drives. I lived in the NH boondocks 20 yrs and never once didn't get out of my own driveway over the snow plow bank in a Subaru no less. It's not THAT tough. Writer has chief of police snowshoeing....which is very difficult esp. when there are ski mobiles for the desperate newbie losers who can't drive in snow. And snow blowers....ever heard of them Shelley??? Snow blowers? Clears a path to walk on. More people have them in NH than probably ice scrapers and shovels.

All in all the story has its absurd moments and ridiculous "NH people" protrayals but it's entertaining if nothing else. Rent it.

HORNS by Joe Hill

Boring juvenile rambling. Some teen? wakes up hungover with new horns on his head. We get to listen to everyone's angst - all the bullshit in their head as well as Ig's head and his doctors head. Boring boring.....big snore. I didn't even bother finishing the first chapter. Lost me. Absolutely didn't intrigue, or interest me at all.

The 13th HOUR by Richard Doetsch *****

Yeah, go buy this one cuz it's wicked good. Fast paced page turner, exciting and different. The book is written backwards, last chapter first. I'm not going to give a lot away but Nick the protag gets to do a day over and over until it comes out in a less devastating manner. Every hour he advances he goes back 2.

There are a few issues, going-back-in-time ones but they are unimportant because the story is more interesting than the little fuss budget things. For example; in one scenario he needs- say a necklace but in other 'time' scenarios he still carries them, doesn't need it, or drags some other things with him and it creates unaddressed issues here and there. Also in some areas in order not to give too much away the author gives away too little making some scenes hard to conceptualize in relation to other past/future events.

All in all: It's a fun story and I liked it a lot.

The FOUR FINGERS of DEATH by Rick Moody*

It seems I've been reading this crap for a month, it's really been 5 days and I'm only on page 88. What a chore. Astronauts, space, a stupid forward that has no relation to the rest. I lost interest and don't really care. One of the spacenuts is on the craft outside repairing something and the other one says join me doing flips on the tether then he launches into a 3 page diatribe about how he learned to swim. I don't GAS and I'm all done with this piece of crap Mr. "master of maximalist prose and human minutiae". Which means verbose CRAP.

Throw your pen away Rick. How the hell did you get anyone to publish this shit? Whose dick?

The EXECUTOR by Jesse Kellerman ****

Really good writing, intriguing storyline. This lumpy sloth of a guy is still in college after like 8 yrs studying philosophy and anything else to prolong his stay there. He loses his girlfriend and coincidently finds a posting for a 'conversationalist' job. Most of this is preposterous bullshit but it's still not a bad read. So Mr. Philosopher's new job is an elderly woman, eventually he inherits her shit and begins to quietly murder to keep his new financial status. Which in the first place he never held a job, never owned anything and the story sort of tells how when you suddenly "have stuff" the lengths some will go to protect it even tho they espouse a 'free from stuff' existence. Where the hell did he get ANY money to begin with? I mean for his education, his food, his books blahblah....never saw the answer to that.

Reads along well, you are very in tune with the protagonist and know the others fairly well. The only bitch aside from the absurdity of the whole idea is we don't get much from the lead character as far as FEELINGs. We get his actions-which writer infers mostly as "accidents" -but no motives. Killing someone would evoke some actual emotion but in this story not so much. Lacking there.

The CORRECTIONS by Jonathan Franzen

Well what a boring piece of shit picked by the Oprah club. Wife asks, "What are you doing?" Next: "He began a sentence, I am"- and we then get an entire page of how he can no longer see the light of the clearing from which he'd entered, blahblahblah....blahblahblah.....bottom of page: "packing my suitcase." This blahblah is on each and every page between any action, dialogue or any hint of something you may WANT to read.....boring me to shit. BORING.

I sincerely doubt I'll finish. I'm hoping to get beyond chapter ONE!

Didn't finish. Too much adornment, too decorative, too BORING. Dead BORING. Flashbacks, people's adolescent thoughts, sex, boobs, tits, whatever. HATE IT. I imagine men jerking off while writing this fluff crap. I mean every day....habitually between pages they picture the fake women and their fake boobs, hop online to some cheap-o porn site and jerk off. Men writing "fiction": Write, mention tits, jerk off, sleep. Try to make it NOT look like a lot of T&A while filling it with T&A.