The PERFECT WITNESS by Iris Johansen *

I spent my time (wastefully) reading this book. I only made it to 50 pages. There is never ending repetition like you're a stupid idiot reader who can't process information and retain it. It's about some kid who could read people's memories and she's about I think 16. So her mom screws a "don" and gets anything she wants cuz she's so fucking beautiful. So the kid is saved by a mysterious stranger and they discuss ad nauseam about her stupid ass power of reading people's memories. I mean this is 50 pages of going over it and over it and over it. You can just tell this guy who killed 3 men to save her is about 40 and at some ridiculous point going to marry her in the future.

I don't like this book I stopped reading at 50 pages cuz it bored the crap out of me. If you're under 25 you probably will like it. If you're over 25 you probably will think it's boring.

STONE COLD by C.J. Box ****

I sort of liked that there was a lot of action scenes. There were easily distinguished people even tho there was an overwhelming amount of them. Some hunting guys, in a hunting type town are all into each other's pockets, the judge, a cop, a bunch of rich people and they pretty much spent their lives in the town not getting caught for their injustices. They hunt illegally, they kill people and most are deadly dangerous.

So Joe is sent by some congressman or someone to see what's going on and of course sticking his nose in all the way gets him in trouble. Some of the "bad" guys end up helping him so they can stay out of jail or not get as badly punished. That said, on a scale of 1-10 I'd give it a 6 following is the reason:

People will not read Backyard Dog, or other animal books like Marley and Me because they are scared they will cry. What the fuck is that? So C.J. Box is a NY Times best seller and there are mounted animal heads in every room of everyone's house or hunting cabin. They kill animals for sport and some bad guys follow the game warden to see where he frees pheasants so they can go slaughter them later having a bloodbath of feathers and dead birds. Anyone crying yet? No? Well you'll enjoy all the other animals slaughtered and massacred during the story without crying because it seems people are discriminatory about what sort of dead animals are ok and which are not (dogs). This so much pisses me off. THERE ARE DEAD ANIMAL CARCASSES THROUGHOUT THE NY TIMES BEST SELLER BOOK!!!!  Um...DUH.

So why does Box get so much attention and there's even proof that the meat cutter blended HUMAN meat into the carcass sausages. GO READ THAT and NOT CRY. Ya bunch of sissies. Rant over.

The HUSBAND by Dean Koontz ****

I got so pissed that every book on library shelves are by foreign writers that I resorted to the back part and selected books from Dean that I haven't preread or remember reading.

This is an early book and it's about a husband who's wife is kidnapped and he needs a couple million to get her back (not a lot of money nowadays) so he goes to his brother who is wealthy (he has no idea how) and the brother was sort of expecting this scenario. The brother doesn't GAS about the wife, let them kill her he says. The husband isn't on that team.

He figures out a way to get his wife returned even if it means his sociopathic brother dies. I read it 2 weeks ago, forgot to write it up and can't remember everything. Not bad, he always writes books I enjoy reading.

VERTIGO 42 by Martha Grimes *

Sorry she shouldn't even get ONE star but I'm feeling generous. She bored me to death. Ok, almost to death, I'm not quite dead yet good thing I put the fucker down.

English Brit writer, I never read her crap before so was unaware and read back flyleaf to see where she lived and it said won Mystery Writers blahblah of America so I thought she was American. WTF does the Grand Master Award allow ANYONE other than an AMERICAN to win anything they have by the way of contests. This shit bored me. There's so much Brit crap English, no slang, idiots drinking tea. All the men sound like they're gay. NTTAWWT but I was sick of it before  page 30 or so. Dropped in frustration. The Vertigo 42 is a club. Some idiot who's mother named the poor kid JURY went there to meet someone and I don't know what else it has to do with the story.

They find a dead woman dressed up fell or pushed (pushed of course) off a tower of some kind. Then with the dogs and rescue groups blahblah I couldn't stand it anymore. If you like Grimes so much YOU go read it.

The HUSBAND by Dean Koontz *****

Very early Dean, I couldn't find any books by American authors that I wanted to read at the library, they all sucked. I am not going to read fantasy, vampire, queens of anywhere, faeries, other godly worlds WTF is that all about?

I went into the back of the library where older books are kept and found some Koontz's I either don't remember reading or didn't read. This was one of them. He had a simple story line, guys wife is kidnapped he has a specific time to get her returned for a couple million. It was expected by the kidnappers that he would ask his rich brother for the money, he did and realized that all the time they wanted to blackmail the brother figuring this was the easiest way to do that. He finds out pretty quickly that his brother is dealing with child porn, and doesn't give a shit about his brother's wife. Not giving anymore away, read it. Worth it. Good story.

BROOD by Chase Novak **

Very terribly slow moving piece of crap. I have no clue what the "brood" is, someone takes her niece and nephew in to their redone home where their parents "committed suicide" after being in a fertility clinic. Some people come out ok, others not so much.

The aunt is way way too thoughtful. Am sick of being inside her miserable head. Street kids talk like they never heard English before, duh stupid. People are drinking their blood for hard-ons. Very stupid idiotic idea. I can't take the narrative bullshit anymore. Have a go yourself. I found it way less than biting my nails for entertainment.

SONG FOR THE DYING BY Stuart MacBride

I read the back fly cover and missed the fecking part where he comes from Scotland. Abortion. Some stupid idiot cop is in jail suddenly without reason broken out by the cops to help with a case. No rhyme or reason. Topics shoot from the moon and back again. Just when you think you know what's going on you are forced to watch a movie in some dumpy crummy apartment, unless the movie has the dumpy crummy apartment I can't tell. Not one writer has ever forced me to watch a movie and not know I'm watching a movie. Goes from one chapter to the movie.

Hated the goddam thing. Get the bloody crash kit I'm out of here dickwad.

LIFE EXPECTANCY by Dean Koontz ****

I went over to the old books section at the library to find books by writers I like that I may have missed. This was one of them.

There are 2 babies born (Punchinello, Jimmy), one ends up with a psychotic clown father the other with a nice family but now their lives are forever intertwined. I'm not giving anything away but there are a lot of twists and turns, lots of revelations and some scary stuff for a family of bakers.

In one spot on page 185 Jimmy and his wife are on the way to the hospital (having a baby) and since Jimmy has bad days predicted in his future he BRINGS A GUN with him while they travel to the hospital. They have a run in with Mr. Clown Beezo and at no time did Jimmy even think of his gun. Not once. He never pulled it out to save himself or his pregnant wife because on page 232 he certainly had opportunity.

Apparently Dean Koontz has had several run ins with circus people and finds them to be somewhat angry and deadly. At least in this book they are. Aside from that blunder of writing in which Jimmy should have either forgot to bring the gun or didn't own one the book was easily readable, sometimes intense and edge of the seat. I liked it, would recommend buying it or library. Whichever.

SAINT ODD by Dean Koontz *****

Because this is the last Odd Thomas story I want to downgrade the stars but that wouldn't be fair because I was entranced throughout the novel. The thing about Koontz's writing is he does so much descriptive, narrative, inward thinking of the characters that sometimes I have to put the book down so it doesn't drive me crazy. I do tend to skip some of it but always afraid I'll miss something when I do that.

Story is about (if you know Odd you know about his gypsy ticket w/Stormy) the end or death of Odd. Now due to the card saying something like 'together forever' he's been without Stormy for about 2 yrs and when he dies they are rejoined but what is death according to Koontz? Strange for a start and that's about all you get is a start, at least he's not as freaking strange about the horrors faced after life as S.King and what he did to me after I read Revelations. Scared the bejesus outta me. So thank you Dean for making death seem a-ok.

Some cultists Odd dealt with in the past are back seeking him out and trying to destroy the world. Odd gets stabbed in the left hand but in the end a bullet has his name on it. It's all very strange due to the red herring water dream. Other people with ESP talents and gypsys, carnies, tattooed people and other odd things for ODD.

I was an animal control officer once upon a time and I had the police kill a rabid fox in town. I read up on rabies on the internet and found that no one ever, ever died from aerosolized rabies, one case of a person inside a bat cave may have been the only person dying that way. It's a possibility if it's from the brain or saliva directly. So I asked the officer to shoot the fox in the heart not the head because it was my responsibility to keep everyone safe. The premise in the book isn't really described in much detail but rabies cannot live outside brain/saliva product for a good long minute or so. Keeping it on a knife or whatever and stabbing someone would be total fiction...ok so this is total fiction.

Anyways the other way to kill hundreds or thousands of people by infecting a town with aerosolized rabies isn't exactly going to work being passed from person to person as described by the CDC it would be "extraordinary circumstances". I still can't go with aerosolized as a spray rabies. It would need to be extracted from brain fluid or saliva but NOT blood product. Altho rabies can survive in humans for years before becoming deadly, it's rare. It's a strange unpredictable disease. This story is based on the rabies collection from rabid bats. It would be so, so difficult to get enough rabies from bats it would take years and much research to perfect any spray. Rabies cannot survive for long in air. Again, I accept the fact I'm reading fiction and most readers don't have this much knowledge.

Liked it a lot withholding my disbelief. Bye Oddie. :( you'll be missed.

BLACK LIES, RED BLOOD by Kjell Eriksson *

I can  barely get into the beginning and started to concentrate to figure out why. He does not have a main character in the beginning so it's hard to get into. You get dragged from person to person or scene to scene without a warning. That stupid asshole who wrote Shades of Gray has prompted all fucking asshole publishers to insist on invading every book written with descriptive sexual bullshit.

On chapter three (par example)  there is a person-WTF, who is it? Where is it? And why the fuck do I care if someone at her desk has a throbbing stomach clench, shades if gray here, (it's the clitoris morons) when she won't stop obsessing about the dick that just slid out of her. I have no idea what her name is until the last page of the chapter, don't know what desk it is, where, cop station? People are asking if she has a fever for shit's sake. From reexamining her every sexual move? Or his? Look, bad enough the writer is frickin Swedish I despise foreign writers, should I say NON writers? How does this MOVE the story forward? Every word should MOVE the story forward yet I'm stuck in this bitches day dreaming about her dripping sex parts and being licked under her armpit for an entire chapter. DONE. No more for me.

Bye bye.