September 17th 2008
Skin and Bone
Although one of the cover blurbs proclaims, “Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs — move over,” I didn’t find this book as intriguing as either of the other two authors. Perhaps with a few more books under her belt, Fox will be able to create a more dynamic character in Detective Sargent Kate Farrer. I certainly see the potential… absolutely. That said, if you like Cornwell and Reichs, you’ll probably like Fox, too.
It took me a while to figure out the story was set in Sydney, Austrailia, because it was only an off-hand reference once or twice. Silly me… at first I thought it was somewhere in the UK.
And now, let’s talk about the people who write the synopsis without ever having read the book. Cut that out. Sometimes it’s just little things that are off, but it’s still highly annoying. Kate Farrer did not take a “four-month leave from the force when the stress of the job threatened to crush her,” she took a three-month leave to recover from the psychological terror of being kidnapped and tortured. A very slight difference, I’m sure. But one that gives you a very different first impression of a character.
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I have yet to read anything by Scott Adams that I didn’t love. God’s Debris is his first non-Dilbert book, and it’s a doozy. Is it fiction? Is it non-fiction? The jacket blurb is almost as good as the book, so I want to share that with you.
Written in 1976, the same year I graduated from high school, this book contains gems of wisdom that have stood the test of time. Now granted, had I read this book when I was 18 years old, my reaction to it would have been similar to my daughter’s reaction to many things I say to her now… “Yeah. WHATever.”
It seems like a no-brainer to me. This is America, and we should all have the same rights, responsibilities and obligations. Why should I have access to 1,049 different Federal benefits just because I happened to have married a man?
Eve doesn’t have much patience for snooty rich women, that’s for sure. And when one such woman’s husband winds up murdered, she takes an almost instant dislike to said snooty rich woman.
Oh, yeah… more Eve Dallas! This one is a collection of three novellas.
I loved Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. It was a fun read. It had mysteries and conspiracy theories and, lest we forget, it was a work of fiction. It certainly annoyed the heck out of a lot of people, most notably the Catholic Church.
I’d never heard of Karin Slaughter before I picked up this book over the weekend. All I wanted was something to read while riding the bus around Manhattan, ya know? In one of the blurbs on the cover, the Washington Post calls her “one of the best crime novelists in America.” Maybe. There were certainly enough plot twists to rival a bowl of spaghetti.
Back in the day when Dallas was still a newbie and Feeney was training her to be the righteous cop she is today, they caught a case they weren’t able to solve… another psycho serial killer. Well, boys and girls, the psycho is back in New York plying his trade once again.
All sorts of fun things are happening in this one! Once again, I’ve gone backwards to a book earlier in the series… prior to Peabody’s rise to detective. In fact, this is the book where Dallas recommends that Peabody take the detectives exam.