One of Us Is Lying - Karen McManus

Seriously, the title of this book could be "All of Us Are Lying." Every single one of these kids had something to hide and was lying about something throughout the book. But, I actually grew to like them.

One of Us Is Lying follows five kids in detention - Bronwyn - The Brain, Addie - The Princess, Cooper - The Athlete, Nate - A Criminal and Simon - The Basketcase. By the end of detention, Simon is dead and everyone else is a suspect.

The narration skips between the "Bayview Four" and does a really great job slowly teasing out their hidden secrets. I really liked trying to figure out what they were hiding and how it made a difference in solving the mystery of who killed Simon. I also liked the way McManus shows the developing relationships between the four as they bond over their shared experience.

The book read true to teenage issues and the narrator's voices were genuine. Sometimes YA literature can go to the bad condescending place or be overly cerebral. My favorite character was Addie because I thought she grew the most out of all the characters and she ended up being a bit of a bad ass at the end.

I know there is a sequel, and I'm going to read it. But I'm not really sure where they can go from here.

3.75/5 Stars.

Sometimes I Lie - Alice Feeney

Some parts of Sometimes I Lie I really enjoyed, and other parts fell very flat for me. It's a good sign that I was relatively certain through the first quarter of the book that Amber had multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia, but alas, Claire turned out to be a real person. (I was right about Jo though).

Anyway, this thing turns a bit at different spots and I don't want to say too much except to say that reading from the perspective of someone in a coma felt a bit contrived, but necessary for the structure that was set up and this was the element I liked least of all.

I'm fine with untrustworthy narrators, and as those things go, Amber was very very untrustworthy. But that makes the reading fun, but also sometimes confusing. It took a while to figure out who was doing what and why. I was even pretty pleased with Madeline Frost's comeuppance until it got real dark.

People who are really into these "psychological thrillers" will probably enjoy this book more than I did. But it was entertaining and kept me guessing quite a bit, even if the end didn't really make sense and mucked things up.

3.5/5 Stars. 

The Lying Game - Ruth Ware

There are five rules in the Lying Game:

1: Tell a Lie - looks like there is a big lie lurking at the center of this book. Like every Ware novel, this secret is teased out over the course of backflashes as we learn how the four main characters, Isa, Thea, Kate and Fatima get to know each other at an English boarding school in the town of Salten where they make up this silly game which makes everyone hate them.

2: Stick to Your Story - they're pretty good at this one since it's 17 years later and only a dog and the unstoppable reach of water has uncovered the secret they thought they buried in the marsh.

3: Don't Get Caught - Pretty clear someone is going to get caught here so when Kate sends a text simply saying "I need You", the other three drop everything to be at their side. Their cover story of attending a reunion at a school that Fatima and Isa attended for less than a year and never graduated from is just weird, but I chalked this up to never having attended boarding school myself.

4: Never Lie to Each Other - whoops, well what do you expect for rules set down by 15 year olds who haven't spoken to each other in years but somehow remain the best of friends. This rule gets broken a lot, and mostly within the first few chapters.

5: Know When to Stop Lying - this rule had me yelling at my dashboard listening to the audio. A lot of things could have been cleared up if the characters had stopped lying to each other (see Rule 4), partway through the book.

Other points:
- Ware knows how to draw up a spooky scene. Kate is still living in the ramshackle tide mill her father owned during their school years. It's falling apart and slowly sinking into the sea. But Kate, who has become an artist like her father, has refused to leave and has lived a life near the poverty line as a result.

ruthware.com Setting for the Lying Game

- The men in this book take a backseat to the female characters, but they are the biggest proponents of plot. Kate's father Ambrose draws pictures of the girls. Kate's brother Luc is the subject of Isa's teenage crush and when he shows up partway through the book, yells at Isa, who is holding a baby and seems sinister until, poof, off goes his shirt and all is forgiven. (Yeah I REALLY didn't understand what was happening here). And then there is Owen, Isa's partner who seems like a pretty decent guy, until Isa starts yelling at him and lying to him about... whatever, it's not important and she easily could have smoothed things over with him at any point in the book.
- All this baby does is breastfeed and nap. And Isa is obsessed with the baby until, whoops, (view spoiler)
- And (view spoiler)

So this book ended up a little uneven for me. But it was MUCH better than Woman in Cabin 10. Isa is a stronger character and is a good narrator even if she is a little slow-witted sometimes. And the big reveal of the secret is perplexing because the choices were sort of idiotic. But not a bad read and I liked the narration by Imogene Church.

3/5 Stars. 

The Silkworm - Robert Galbraith

It has been a very long time since I read Cuckoo's Calling, the first Cormoran Strike novel by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling). I didn't remember much about it other than I had enjoyed it and there was a private detective, a dead model or something and the detective was an amputee. 

The Silkworm picks up in the aftermath of CC, in which Cormoran finally has paying clients and is a little more financially stable. All of the private detective novels I've ever read have described the razor thin budgets in which these folks work, why do they do this to themselves? I was so concerned about this that even after I finished the book, I kept wondering if Cormoran was even paid for the work he does in The Silkworm.

The fact that the events of The Silkworm involve a missing author and his weird publisher and agent are pretty delicious as Galbraith gets to turn "his" eye on the very industry in which this book is going to be published. 

But in essence, an author who has produced mediocre work and was of questionable character has gone missing. His wife has hired Cormoran to find him, which he does, but in a very disgusting and mutilated form. So then Cormoran turns his attention to catching the killer. Along for the ride is Cormoran's secretary, turned novice gum-shoe, Robin and Cormoran's knee, which is mentioned so much it should be considered another character. (Actually it was mentioned a bit too much - he goes on and on and on about the pain and discomfort and inconvenience of a prosthetic leg but never mentions to visit the damn doctor). I digress, because it really is this issue that makes the book feel overlong.

There are portions that move a bit slowly through the narrative but Galbraith's solid prose keep it interesting. I did figure out a few of the plot points ahead of time although I wasn't completely sure about how the entire murder worked out until the end. I'm glad J.K. Rowling is continuing to write these stories amid her massive Fantastic Beasts and HP fortunes, because they are entertaining mysteries even if this one ran a little long.

4/5 Stars. 

Y is for Yesterday - Sue Grafton

I want to give Y a 3.5 star review mostly because this is the final one. The last alphabet mystery due to the passing of Sue Grafton. And I will say that although I usually rate these books around the 3-star mark. The body of the work itself is a 4-star effort. Grafton kept Kinsey consistent and interesting. Her writing evolved and got better over time. The stories were entertaining.

In Y is for Yesterday, Kinsey is asked to track down an extortionist who is threatening to release a damning video tape implicating a recently released felon for sexual abuse. The felon's parents, not eager to part with the $25,000 demand, and also not eager to see their only son head back to prison, hire Kinsey to figure it out. 

In the meantime, Ned Lowe, the big bad from X is back in play and he wants his trinkets (you know the nice mementos from all those teenage girls he killed). So Kinsey plays the two things together, her paid gig, and her private matter. I can't believe I read X way back in August 2017, so it's understandable why this all seemed so vague. 

The book gives us a bit of backstory on the video tape issue. Turns out (forgive my terrible spelling of names, I listened to the audio), when Iris Loehman steals the test answers for her friends and Climping Academy, it sets in motion a chain of events that lead to the tape and Kinsey. Iris gives the test answers to her friend Poppy Earl and Poppy's boyfriend, Troy Radamacher. Those two are turned in for treating and an influental and grade A A-hole, Austin Brown, points the finger at fellow junior Sloane for ratting out the two. Everyone shuns Sloane. To get them to stop, Sloane steals a video tape of four boys, Troy, Bayard Montgomery, Fritz McCabe and Austin sexually assaulting and documenting the assault of 14 year old Iris. 

Sloane threatens Austin with the tape and he calls off the shunning, then inviting Sloane to his house to get the tape and smooth things over. When she doesn't bring it, the four boys take Sloane up the mountain to an abandoned camp and she is killed by Fritz with Austin's father's hand gun. The boys try to hide the body and lie about the circumstances, but Fritz, who was 15, rolls over and confesses. Bayard exchanges his testimony for immunity. Austin disappears. Troy and Fritz both go to jail. The tape is lost, allegedly until it shows up at Fritz's house with a demand for $25K. 

There are so many possible players on this. Kinsey does her best even though she knows it's a small chance she can figure out who has the tape. The flashback chapters do a good job of teasing out the murder story, even when it seems this would be inconsequential as the murderers and circumstances are more or less known. But they do a good job of establishing who knew what and what the stakes are for the individual players. 

That being said, there is a hefty bit of repetition a good editor should have caught. Things told in real time to Kinsey still appear in the flashbacks in almost the exact format. Also, remember in X when I complained about the voracious details regarding Kinsey's car wash? Well here we're treated to a multiple page description of Iris' chicken dinner preparations. Not needed. 

It's kind of sad that Grafton wasn't able to write a final Z novel (her family has confirmed that Y will be the last Alphabet mystery) but the 25 novels following Kinsey Milhone is not a bad life's work to hang it up on, some never get such an opportunity. RIP Sue Grafton.

3.5/5 Stars

Into the Water - Paula Hawkins

For a final book of the year, Into the Water by Paula Hawkins did not disappoint. I had read and liked, for the most part, Girl on the Train a couple of years ago  (you can read that review here). Despite not liking the main character in that book, Hawkins writing was strong and the plot was well laid out. 

The same can be said for Into the Water. While it may suffer from a few too many narrative voices, Into the Water is a double murder mystery. 

Nell Abbott has died in the drowning pool, a bend of a river where witches were once sentenced to death and drowned. Nell has a bit of a fascination with the spot and the women who have died there, Lizzy Seaton, a young 16th Century girl condemned for withcrafter, Anne Reed, a murderous wife, Lauren Townsend, a distraught and spurned mother, and finally Katie Whittaker, a young classmate of Nell's daughter, Leena. (I listened to the audio of this one, I never know quite how to spell names).

Nell's sister, Jules has arrived in town to take charge of her 15 year old niece, Leena. Jules and Nell were estranged and the circumstances were not good. But that's nothing compared to all the baggage people in this town are carrying. 

Illicit affairs, old grudges, twisted senses of protection - it's all there in this small town and it all works to first mask and then unravel the mystery of Katie and then Nell's death. Hawkins piece-meal deals out her facts and hints like a miser and then in a rush develops the secrets into plot twists. I was entertained even after I had figured it all out, until I hadn't. So that was fun. 

I'm glad to have made my reading goal. Especially because a bad case of plantar fasciitis kept me off the running kick that has fueled the last two years of my audiobook consumption.

4/5 Stars. 

Spider Bones - Kathy Reichs

I haven't read a Temperance Brennan book since probably before Bones became a TV show, so it was kind of like visiting an old friend. I'm not sure where in the series I left off, but lucky #13 Spider Bones seemed as good a book as any to start back with. 

A man found floating in a pond in Quebec has fingerprints traced back to a KIA from Vietnam. The investigation takes Tempe all the way to Hickam Air Force Base on Oahu where exhumed and discovered remains are identified and laid to rest by CIL. Additional remains become involved and well, no spoilers right? 

There is the familiar on-again off-again romance between Detective Andrew Ryan and Tempe. Daughter Katy makes an appearance as does Ryan's daughter, Lily. It's been a while so I didn't remember him having a daughter but well whatever. Some of those details seemed rushed and so did the overall story frankly. Reichs almost seemed just as done with the tedious details that have made the books interesting to read. 

Maybe it's just hard to write a book a year, but this well done story ended up feeling to rushed at the end and garners only three stars. If you've read these, you know what you're getting into already. It's my first "summer" read of the season and it was a perfect beach read, even though pool side will have to do for now. 

3/5 Stars. 

The One from the Other - Philip Kerr

The One from the Other was a little all over the place. I still like Bernie Gunther and his wit. In this installment it's no different. 

The story begins with Bernie travelling to Palestine with a young Adolph Eichmann. Bernie is there to set up a bank account and property for a Jewish business owner emigrating with the assistance/urging of the SD. Eichmann is there to see if he can make a few alliances that will help Germany strategically. Then we fast forward to after the war and Bernie is living in Dauchau at his father-in-law's hotel while his wife, Kiersten is in a mental hospital following a break down. 

Following Kiersten's death, Bernie travels to Munich to set up shop as a private investigator again. However, the clients who keep coming in are looking to help former SS war criminals awaiting German amnesty. Bernie doesn't' have a lot of enthusiasm for the work, but when a good looking woman shows up trying to find her missing husband, he doesn't ask many questions to figure out his motives. This leads to some further violence and well... the plot gets really twisty and turn-y after that. 

I still enjoyed reading/listening to this book, but at times I felt the history lessons were turning into filler. 

3/5 Stars. 

The Kind Worth Killing - Peter Swanson

I was so annoyed with the unlike-ability of the main characters through the first 1/4 of The Kind Worth Killing I was wondering why my good friend had recommended this book. But then something happened that I did not expect and well... I ended up being very entertained and surprised by this book. 

The book starts with Lilly and Ted meeting in an airport bar and having a conversation during which Ted admits that his wife is having an affair and he offhandedly remarks that he's thinking of killing her. Instead of laughing, Lilly basically says, "I'd like to help you with that." The two plot and scheme through the next few chapters as we get varying viewpoints of Ted and his growing obsession with Lilly and Lilly with her backstory of a lonely childhood with aloof and irresponsible parents. 

I really can't say more because it would be giving a lot away and honestly being surprised by this book was the best part. Sort of like a Gone Girl feeling. Not quite as well written as a Gillian Flynn book, but well done nonetheless.

4/5 Stars. 

The Heist - Daniel Silva

These Gabriel Allon books continue to deliver. The Heist was a bit slower than the last installment as I thought the two distinct story lines were a bit too far apart, but I really love Silva's ability to weave together history, art, and current events. 

The Heist begins with Gabriel in a church restoring an altarpiece. It's a wonderful shake back to those first Allon novels which found him doing the same thing. He's living in Venice, now with a pregnant Chiara and you can feel like, although he's back in this space, it's more of a last goodbye as he contemplates becoming Chief of The Office. 

But it seems his friends just can't stay out of trouble. His friend Julian Isherwood has stumbled on a dead body and of course Gabriel is asked by his friend in the Art Squad to take a look on behalf of the Italian Carabinieri. Gabriel discovers that the dead man was actually a stolen art dealer. Gabriel is asked to follow the trail of stolen art to find a missing Caravaggio, the Art Squad's number one target. 

What Gabriel discovers is that Bashar Al-Asad, the Syrian president, has been commissioning art thefts in order to create portable wealth should his regime topple. Not satisfied with a few recovered paintings, Gabriel uncovers a vast network of wealth tied to "Evil Incorporated." To infiltrate the network, Gabriel must call upon a female bank manager - a child of Syria and herself a victim of the regime. 

And of course he needs his team and some things don't go according to plan. The stakes don't seem too high for Gabriel in this one, we're not ever worried for his personal safety, but it is interesting seeing him undertake an operation with the understanding that the entire show will soon be his responsibility. He's going to be a father soon after all.

3.75/5 Stars. 

The English Girl - Daniel Silva

For me, reading a Gabriel Allon novel is like putting on a beloved winter coat. While it might not be the most stylish thing in the world, I feel warm and comfy and home. It's been a while since I read a Gabriel Allon thriller and I had almost forgotten how much I enjoy them. But I needed a new audio book from the library and The English Girl was available right away. 

In this story, Madeline Hart, a young English political party worker is on holiday on the island of Corsica when she is kidnapped. The British Prime Minister receives a vague ransom note and Gabriel is called in as a favor to Graham Seymour to find and rescue Madeline. 

Unfortunately, he's unable to find her in time and must then deliver $10M in ransom from the Prime Minister himself. In the meantime, Ari Shamron is demanding Gabriel finally take the job as the chief of the office, a position he has been circling around for some time. Going much further into the plot gives a little too much away. I was quite pleased with myself for figuring out some of the mystery early on. And the fact that no one in the story is quite what they seem should not be a surprise. 

So here I'm sitting at work, having finished up the book on the way into the office this morning and needing a book for the ride home. So I've decided to keep my ride with Gabriel going for just a little while longer before I switch out to something else. Because, well, I'm comfortable in this old coat of mine and it's not quite time to take it off.

3.5/4 Stars. 

A German Requiem - Philip Kerr

It's 1948. The War is over, and at first, we're not really sure what Bernie has been up to that whole time. We do know that he has a wife, but it doesn't seem to make him as happy as he thought he could be during the last book where he felt his own biological clock ticking.

What is clear, is that post-WWII Berlin of A German Requiem is not a good place to be even BEFORE the blockade. Bernie has to navigate the various occupied zones and life again as a private detective and he's not doing that great of a job at any of it. Meanwhile, his wife Kirsten is waiting tables at an American bar and coming home with unexplained gifts.

Bernie is approached by a Russian colonel with a proposition, go to Vienna and clear the name of his former police colleague Emile Becker who stands accused of murdering an American officer. The money and his home life lead Bernie to agree and so we get to see Bernie a little of his normal game, in a new city full of more uncertainty. And as the story progresses we learn that he was drafted from the police squad into an SS regiment, requested a transfer as the mass-murdering of civilians was not his style, and fought on the Russian front until captured and held in a Gulag. On the way to his execution by the Russian government, he escapes and makes his way back to Berlin.

But it seems the war, and the SS just can't leave Bernie be. He's entirely too moral and this makes him an unknown player in post-war espionage. The book is very well done and I always appreciate the final twists and turns that I don't really see coming. I also really liked the book's treatment of collective guilt and the shades of truth that exist in that examination. Women again don't fair very well in this story, even where they do try to have some agency of their own.

The audio version continues to amuse me as Christopher Lee narrates Bernie with such a cynical British accent, but the Russian and American characters got accents all their own. Poor British sounding German Bernie.


3.75/5 Stars.

The Pale Criminal - Phillip Kerr

I

know I haven't been doing as many reviews lately. My time with the audiobooks has been seriously curtailed this last month. Back in August a friend of mine told me she was coming to Nashville to watch some live tapings of her favorite podcasts and asked if I'd be interested in attending. I agreed and set off to download a couple episodes so I could become familiar enough not to embarrass myself at the tapings.

Well, turns out one podcast, The Adventure Zone, was a 69 episode narrative odyssey so my audiobooks took a backseat for all of September and most of October as I attempted to absorb 80 hours of audio in preparation for the show. Then, coming off the finale episode, I had one of those weeks where nothing else seemed appealing. Have you ever finished a book series like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings that left you so absorbed for so long that everything else seemed dull and pale in comparison? That is what The Adventure Zone did to me. That a graphic novel is coming out in July is delightful, but I'm really feeling sad that the journey is over. If you are into fantasy fiction at all, you should check it out. The podcast got better and better as it went along (check out this write-up in the Austin Chronicle).

But, alas, I now have a longer commute, and aside from re-listening to some of my favorite episodes (which I have done), there seemed nothing for it but to get back on the audio horse and start listening again. So I turned back to the Berlin Noir series and Bernie Gunther.

The Pale Criminal kicks off in 1938, a year or so after the last installment in the series. Bernie now has a partner, a character whose name I won't even try to spell, and at the beginning of the story, a new client. The client is a rich woman with a troubled son. The mother is being blackmailed for the return of lewd letters the son wrote to his therapist. Exposure of such a homosexual nature could result in a death sentence in Nazi Germany. Bernie agrees to find out who is doing the blackmailing and recover the rest of the letters.

In the meantime, it looks like the head of the criminal police force also needs Bernie's help in uncovering a serial murderer who is kidnapping, raping, and killing young German girls in Berlin. The investigation of which unravels quite a few insidious plots along the way.

I really appreciated the skill with which the two mysteries were wrapped together. There was so much richness added regarding the background of the times and the environment in which Bernie is trying to solve these crimes. Real characters like Karl Maria Wiligut, Otto Rahn, Himmler and Heydrich play large roles in the story. And because of the murky details surrounding Rahn's death, and Wiligut's "retirement" from the SS, Kerr has a lot of room to work in the details of those circumstances to his own fictional devices.

This continues to be an excellent series.


4/5 Stars.

Dark Matter - Blake Crouch

With Dark Matter I did something I haven't done in a while with a book - finished it in four days.

An incredibly fast read, Dark Matter takes a familiar "It's a Wonderful Life" trope and jazzes it up for the modern age. 

Jason Dessen, a community college physics professor has always wondered how his life would turn out if he had walked away from his pregnant girlfriend in his 20s and pursued his planned scientific research. As he watches his college roommate receive a prestigious scientific award, his feelings of regret become acute. But Jason is happy with his wife and teenage son. 

On the way home from celebrating his friend's award, Jason is abducted and drugged. When he awakens, he finds himself in a world where he is a renowned scientist on the verge of a breakthrough. Missing for 14 months, this Jason Dessen is welcomed back as a triumphant hero. Turns out he's been working on this box that collapses time and space, allowing you to move through multiple realities in which reality forks off whenever a choice is made. Jason knows this is not his world, but since he's not the brilliant scientist who invented the box, he's not quite sure how it works, or how he is supposed to get home to his family. 

Jason doesn't spend long in his new world - it's instantly apparent he doesn't belong or want to be there. I don't want to give any more plot points away since mega spoilers folks, but you get the drill. He opens a lot of wrong doors to other worlds in his attempts to find the right ones. Sometimes the descriptions come off as a bit too manufactured, but since the book moves so lightening fast, so do the descriptions.

There's no time to rest in this book. The short declarative sentences keep you moving from one scene to the next. It kept my attention and kept me moving through the whole story. I was thoroughly entertained. It's gonna make a great movie.

4/5 Stars. 

A Secret Kept - Tatiana De Rosnay

I read Tatiana de Rosnay's first book, Sarah's Key a couple of years ago (before I had a blog) and really liked it. This sophomore follow up didn't live up to the first books expectations. A Secret Kept starts with Antoine and Melanie Rey going for a long weekend to the seaside French town they vacationed to as children with their parents. Both are going through a mid-life crisis of sorts. 

Antoine is recently divorced from his wife Astrid and is struggling with part-time parenting of his three children - two of whom are full throttling through puberty. Melanie is coming off a long term relationship with a man who swore he would never get married just to up and impregnate and marry a woman 15 years his junior within weeks of the breakup. They both need some time and space away from Paris.

However, on the drive home Melanie wrecks the car and nearly dies after attempting to tell Antoine some long held family secret. The secret however, is hardly worth the build up and the letters from the past used to hint and then reveal the secret are easily the worst contrived writing in the book. I honestly thought the rest of the prose was well done but the letters were the hardest part to get through. 

So the great family mystery doesn't really seem much of a mystery and all the characters who have a stake in the mystery just up and die or are already dead so there's no real effect of learning the secret. So many people died in the second half of this book I thought maybe George RR Martin was ghostwriting. 

The book probably would have been better if it didn't try to pass itself off as a mystery and instead was a straightforward character examination of a man in a mid-life crisis. Antoine was the most well flushed out character and I actually enjoyed his journey. The characters also make some non-conventional choices which I enjoyed, even if it did leave the ending a bit unfulfilling.

3/5 Stars. 

X - Sue Grafton

This was a slightly different take for Kinsey. X is the combination of three separate mysteries. First, a woman asks Kinsey to track down a son she put up for adoption who has just been released from jail. Second, Pete Wolinsky, who died in the last novel as part of a bribery scheme, has left a coded message of names of women. Third, two elderly neighbors with suspect motives have moved in next door to Henry. 

The three mysteries are completely unrelated, but all happening simultaneously. The mixture of issues helps to move the book's plot along, especially where it might have petered out in singularity. None of the three mysteries is quite enough to make a novel-length story of its own. It's nice to see Kinsey not quite so hard up for money, but it's equally disturbing seeing her throw around money on hotel rooms all the while knowing she's not getting paid. Her one paid gig in the entire book is over and done with in the first couple chapters. Otherwise she seems to be on the verge of unemployed. 

I received X a while ago on NetGalley in exchange for a review. I fully intended to make it through the earlier novels faster, but it just wasn't to be. Surprisingly though, after so many books following once character, Grafton continues to put out consistently readable and entertaining material. Perhaps she never expected to make it this far. X isn't for anything in this one. It just simply is. 

3.5/5 Stars. 

March Violets - Philip Kerr

Bernie Gunther is a private detective in the volatile world of Berlin in 1936. With the backdrop of the Olympic summer games, Bernie is asked by steel magnate, Herman Six (sorry for the spelling errors, I listened to this one), to find out what happened to a diamond necklace stolen from a safe the night his daughter was shot and killed while in bed with her husband - before their home was set aflame. In the mix are the March Violets, newcomers to the Nazi party with something to prove and status to gain. 

Bernie unravels more than he bargained for as he tries to navigate the changing landscape of power in the Third Reich. Goring, Himmler and Goebbels all make brief appearances to help cement the reader in time. 

As far as noir goes, this novel is spot on. A devastatingly beautiful film actress, secret motives, guns for hire, etc etc, this book has it all. I was able to figure out a very important piece of the story before Bernie, but the plot went in such wild directions afterwards that I was pleasantly surprised by later developments. There is a bit of melancholy which the period evokes that can never be done away with. But Bernie's dogged determination and cynical viewpoint help to move the story along.

It's a bit incongruous to have the book read by John Lee, who is British, and the story occur in Berlin. Lee is a great narrator, but at times it was jarring to hear a cockney accent on a German thug. Written by the British Kerr, the book is one stepped removed from the realism or authenticity a German author may have given to the story - as the jokes are more heavily in the British style of humor than German. 

4/5 Stars. 

Inferno - Dan Brown

Here's a good plan for when you have finished an audiobook and all your other audiobooks are still on hold at the library and you're unlikely to get one for a few more weeks - you go to your Goodreads "to-read" list and you start searching to see what is available.

What is not a good idea, is to go to your library's "available now" section of audiobooks, because then you will wander blithely into picking a mediocre novel by a famous author who once "stunned" the world with a provocative explosively popular novel over a decade ago. 

I think I was living in Italy when Dan Brown's The Davinci Code came out and I bought it from my Air Force Base's BX Store (in hardback!) and proceeded to read it in about three days. It was not Brown's first book to feature Harvard professor and symbologist Robert Langdon, but it was certainly his most popular. From it a movie with Tom Hanks was made, and since I love Tom Hanks, I saw that too. But although I went back and read all of Brown's earlier work, I haven't read anything published after The Davinci Code.

So I walked into Inferno knowing that Robert Langdon was back, and this was apparently a fourth Langdon novel (I entirely missed a third that came out some time ago). And well, my impression of Inferno is that I didn't miss much. In this one, Langdon wakes up in a hospital room, having been shot in Florence, Italy and he has retrograde amnesia covering the past 48 hours. Pursued by unknown assassins, he and a young English doctor, Sienna Brooks, must follow the path left by a madman prior to his suicide. The man, a famed geneticist named Bertran Zobrist - significantly obsessed with Dante and an impending global catastrophe represented by overpopulation - has left a video of himself placing a virus in a subterranean lagoon set to deploy in the next 36 hours.

Langdon and Brooks must attempt to locate the virus before it is too late. Of course not all is as it seems, including the virus and Brooks herself. 

I get it, by this point, Brown has the formula down that makes him money. Link up some obscure locations and facts, underlay a conspiracy and shadowy groups that operate on the margins, and have Langdon go on a treasure hunt of sorts to find the pieces. Voila, publishing gold. Really at this point Brown likely has so much money, more books are not necessary, but the publishing contracts don't fulfill themselves I suppose. 

But this one felt a little more lifeless than the Davinci Code. A little more rote. It was sort of like a chase scene combined with a Rick Steve's guide and somehow had an underwhelming baby. The evil guy was seriously weird and twisted, but actually not that evil. The symbols were detailed and well researched, but for all that I'm not really sure they served a purpose other than leading us on a 400 page scavenger hunt. 

Was I entertained? Yes. But since I wasn't on the beach or an airplane, this felt like too little work, for too little reward. I did end up recently watching the movie and several things were changed from the book, including the entire ending. (you can rent the movie here). 

3/5 Stars. 

W is for Wasted - Sue Grafton

I appreciate that over the course of all the books in the Alphabet Series, Kinsey Millhone manages to advance in one way or another. What I appreciate less is the mundane details of Kinsey's life. I actually spent two pages reading about what was happening to her car in a car wash. At that point I considered packing it in on this series. So what if I received X for free in exchange for a review, is that worth my time reading about what someone had for lunch? And how many soft rag mechanisms are inside the car wash? But, on the mystery side, this one played out fairly well.

Kinsey is called when a man turns up dead with Kinsey's number in his pocket. The guy is homeless and an alcoholic so Kinsey tracks down his homeless friends and tries to figure out the man's identity. The homeless friends are less than helpful, but she does get just enough information to start unraveling the thread. What unravels is a distant kinship to the man through her father's side of the family, a side not covered in the prior books. 

In what seems to be an unrelated story, a private eye of unscrupulous practices also turns up dead. The two tales grow slowly together as we are given back story through the point of view of the dead detective. 

What was unexpected was the extended commentary on homelessness presented in the book. It was well balanced and looked at the issue from a lot of angles. I appreciated Grafton's choice to not make the issue cut and dry and the attention to nuance was well done. 

A few of Kinsey's love interests pop up to provide some continuity color. All in all, the mystery was one of the better of the series, but the over-described banality of everyday life got a little exasperating in this edition.

3/5 Stars. 

V is for Vengeance - Sue Grafton

Back in April of 2012, I read the first of Sue Grafton's Alphabet series in about six days. The books have become a bit more sophisticated since then, and longer, so this one took a bit longer to read. Every year for the past four years, I've thought that maybe I'd get to the end of the series or at least catch up to Grafton, who continues to write these books as if the 80s never died. This actually may be the year. X came out last year and it's patiently waiting in my kindle to be read. So there is only W standing between me and the current end of the series. 

V finds us hopping around in narrative view point between Kinsey, a quasi gangster named Lorenzo Dante, and a bored socialite, Nora Vogelsang and it all begins with Kinsey shopping for underwear. While at the store, Kinsey spots Audrey Vance slip a couple pairs of very expensive pajamas into a bag. Because she has an overly developed sense of justice, Kinsey turns the woman into the store clerk and an eventual arrest is made. When Audrey Vance turns up dead after taking a spill off a local bridge and into a ravine, Kinsey is hired by the woman's former fiancee to unravel what happened. 

This leads Kinsey into a very organized retail theft ring headed by Lorenzo Dante. Because we have Lorenzo's point of view, we know early on that Audrey was helped in her trip over the bridge by Lorenzo's bumbling but violent brother Cappi. Most of Dante's portions of the book are meant to humanize him. He's a gangster with heart. He never orders any of the violence Cappi performs, he's sorry for those things. He had a close relationship with his mother, who left the family when Dante was young. His father was violent and beat Dante as a child, and now Dante has fallen in love with Nora. The sections from Nora's point of view, in hindsight, seem the most irrelevant and unnecessary in the book, but because the book is set up like a mystery novel, you're not sure of this until the very end. The thing that didn't work for me, was that as judgmental as Kinsey was about the harm that retail theft does, she seemed awful quick to want to forgive Dante for his hand in the entire thing, which was to actually be the head of it all. 

Thrown in is a side drama involving Pinky Ford, who gave Kinsey her set of key picks which come up about once a book, and his wife Dodie. Why Kinsey feels so inclined to stick her neck out for Pinky in this book is a mystery in and of itself and seemed more like a stretch to make a plot point work. 

This was definitely not my favorite of the alphabet mysteries. Most of them get a solid 3 stars, but since this one had so many off elements, it's only getting two.

2/5 stars.