Just finished Dervla McTiernan’s latest, Three Reasons for Revenge, and this one’s set firmly in Melbourne. Detective Sergeant Jude Lee is a 40-yo detective engaged in clashes with an ex-AFL star who’s joined the police after his AFL career is over. However, he’s a loud-mouthed ■■■■■■■■ hooked on meth but whose father is a high-ranking cop…also an ■■■■■■■■.
She interviews a woman who’s come into report that her psychologist has sexually assaulted her, but she then disappears from sight and seems to be quite fictional. The psychologist is quickly murdered and the cops have got the killer…unfortunately framed.
Story rattles along full bore and a very satisfactory read. Unfortunately loses every skerrick of credibility when she refers to a fellow cop who’s English, coming from Pembrokeshire. Maybe coming from Galway, she does realise that that’s in Wales.
Didn’t love this one as much as the first two in the series, and actually struggled a bit with it at times. As with the first two, the ending was stunning though. I will read book 4, but might have a little break from Stormlight instead of ploughing straight into it.
Was really looking forward to this and I wasn’t disappointed. A fast-paced book that benefits from the worldbuilding and some of the characters from the First Law trilogy. Joe’s dark humour shines through again with some new characters that are despicable people, but also very engaging. I guess a harsh and brutal world is going to give you some harsh and brutal characters. Old mate Cosca is back and some of the interactions between him and Friendly were extremely funny.
I’m sure they would have been mentioned here but I’ve just started on the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel.
Wolf Hall, the first instalment was quite good, I enjoyed the style of writing overall, but was annoyed by the way she references Thomas Cromwell as “he”, even when in conversation with several other characters who could also be “he”.
I know it was a huge element of the style that won her the Man Booker prize, but I found it rather distracting.
On to “Bring Up the Bodies” now.
I’d be interested in @Alan_Noonan_10 's take, if he’s read them. Not so much for the story itself but for his take on the historical accuracy when describing the rule of Henry. First hand accounts are sometimes more accurate.
I’ve read the trilogy. I didn’t have any problems with the style. I don’t generally like books where a modern author presents the thoughts and emotions of a historical figure who lived over 400 years ago – how can she possibly know? – and the books have recently been criticised for basically making stuff up, but that period of history is incredibly interesting and the books take you fairly deeply into it. The final book I thought was a bit bloated and not as good as the first two.
On my current month long sabbatical in Bali, I ran of my book downloads having finished every available Jack Reacher story. In our hotel in the mountains they had a library with books in many languages, not many in English. The one that caught my eye looked like it had been read by thousands, and surprised to find it was only published in 2023.
The Only One Left by Riley Sagar, it is a very good mystery story and if you see it, worth a read. A little above my usual Jack Reacher standard.
I understand that this Reacher character is comparatively large, and that the majority of the storyline revolves around the character using this size advantage to resolve situations in which largeness is useful.
I has read all 30 books and Lee Cild and his brother have made $ millions. The storyline is the same in every book, and I read them in a day or two. Not great literature, but takes your mind off the worries of the world like our footy club and Donny Trump.
If Reacher was Bomber Captain/Coach we would win all the fights, and all Grand Finals, the Board would do whatever he wanted and his players give their all.
Now back to reality. 9:30 am, sun is shining, Bintang by my pool.
I’ve read all the Reacher books except the last one (it’s been sitting on my bookshelf since late last year and I just haven’t got to it yet).
The early books were really good…well written, suspenseful with plenty of action.
Then they became a bit formulaic…well, more than a bit…still enjoyable escapism as a read though.
Then he handed the character over to his brother…as you do???
The quality has declined in recent books (imo)…whether that’s because the brother is now involved or because there are no suprises left with the character…maybe both.
Andrew Child actual name is Andrew Grant and he is Lee Childs younger brother. He has now taken over writing the Jack Reacher series, which you can tell by the writing style, which is a bit more bland than Lee Child and the sex scenes have disappeared.
Neither are great writers but the stories are readable and they have mad lots of money.
I remember my neighbour in Aberfeldie telling me her daughter had put her onto a great author. I said…oh, i have about 20 of his books, hold on a tick.
